By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * * )
The question about Andrew WK - the shouty, sweaty, greasy, hairy New Yorker who blew into Auckland on a tailwind of British hype for a gabfest this week - is, with him or at him? Laugh, that is.
For after his debut album lurches
in a single beery breath from his 90-second overture, It's Time to Party, into second track, Party Hard, it's hard not to figure the boy has a certain agenda.
Skip a few more tracks and Mr WK and his cohorts deliver their particular piece de resistance, Party Til You Puke. Curiously enough, the other nine tracks sound not dissimilar to the ones we've already mentioned.
But dude, what a sound: jackhammer-powered, digitally enhanced punk-metal disco-rock fronted by a singer whose larynx was an orbital sander in a former life. Add Ramones/Clash chords and gang's-all-here vocals, Beach Boys-like deja vu tunes (see Girl's Own Love and the curiously touching Ready to Die) and you've got an album that defies you not to laugh along with its infectious sense of Big Dumb Fun.
Or to drink (beer and lots of it) to Mr WK's health (though judging by the bloody-nose cover, that may be a mite pointless), while debating whether he's the nu-metal Billy Idol, Adam Ant, David Lee Roth or Meat Loaf. Coming soon to a noise control incident near you.
Label: Island
